Suppliers in this area leverage alternative datasets such as Satellite imagery and Machine Learning to monitor the global supply chain of commodities in real time. Utilising imagery data, alongside infra-red organisations can now assess the heat at a smelter, for example Pig Iron or Zinc, to ascertain the production of these smelters.

This is then converted to an index which will provide insights into the output of these smelters over a period of time.

Benefits:

Brand new technology providing a leading indicator ahead of other output metrics.

Many smelters don’t report their production output at all, so this is a new datapoint to shine a light on the output of these sites and their impact on pricing on exchanges such as the London Metal Exchange.

Drawbacks:

Limited in coverage of smelters globally, although suppliers can add new mines upon request it will take time to scale up.

As these solutions are new, there isn’t a large historical dataset to test against.